White Lie
by Pinkie Tuscadaro
Summary: Sandy is dying and tells her teenage daughter that Soda is her father. The daughter travels from Florida to Oklahoma in search of her father.
1. Chapter 1

…………………………………1982

Karen stumbled into the hospital room. Like the rest of Florida this hospital was fiercely air conditioned, chilled processed air to counter the heavy, moisture rich air outside. The cloying smell of flowers. Karen wrinkled her nose, it smelled like a funeral, death.

Sandy lay in the bed, emaciated, pale. Karen was afraid of the way her collar bones jutted out, afraid of how she could see all the bones in her hands. Afraid of the fevered glaze of her mother's eyes.

The I.V. pole stood like a silent sentry next to the bed, dripping useless medication into Sandy's veins.

It would be any day, that's what the doctors said. Her mother could die any day. There was something she had to know first.

Karen had screwed up all her courage and would ask Sandy about her father. Who was he? Where was he? Why hadn't he wanted her?

"Mom? Mom?" Sandy raised her eyes to her daughter's face. Even that took energy she didn't have.

"Mom, who is my father?"

Sandy sighed. She had known the question was coming. She thought of Karen's father, a no good hoodlum from Oklahoma, and she knew he died a few years ago in a bar fight, or a drug overdose, or in prison.

She couldn't tell Karen that he was her father. Sensitive, beautiful Karen who wrote in her journal and painted landscapes and who was having a hard enough time with her mother's death.

So Sandy had an answer all ready.

"His name…is…Sodapop Curtis…" Breathless, pushing the words out. Karen could smell alcohol and some sort of floor cleaner they use, medicine and death.

"Sodapop?"

"Yeah…he lives…he lived in Tulsa…north side…"

There. Now Karen had a father, even if she was losing her mother.

x………..x…………x

The illness, a mysterious thing comprised of vague symptoms, night sweats, fevers, weight loss, thrush. Thrush was a creamy white substance that covered her tongue, the doctors called it Candida Albicans.

Karen was 15 and had watched her mother's health decline since she was about 12. The doctors here were at a loss, many of them unaware that doctors in New York and California were seeing many of the same symptoms, an inexplicable decline in health in people in their 20's, 30's, 40's.

Every day Karen would come to the hospital, into the air conditioning, the cool white walls, whisper of nurses' rubber soled shoes on linoleum.

And she did this again, taking the elevator to the 6th floor, turning left, past the nurses' desk to her mother's room.

The room was empty except for the bed, stripped and raised high, to head level. No I.V.'s, no bedside table, nothing. Karen's breath caught in her throat and she stumbled out of the room, to the nurses' desk.

She couldn't even speak. Her eyes filled with thick tears, her throat was numb. She gripped the edge of the desk and stared.

One of the nurses recognized her, a young nurse with long dark hair and friendly eyes.

"Oh my God, Karen," She came over, "honey, your mom is in ICU, we had to move her last night,"

It was bad, but not as bad as she had feared. Karen's legs felt weak, they wanted to buckle under her, spill her to the floor.

"C'mon, honey, I'll bring you there," The young nurse put her arm around Karen's shoulders and lead her down the hall to ICU.


	2. Chapter 2

ICU was a different world than the regular unit. Everything was muffled, wrapped in a strange silence. There were more machines, more little blips and beeps and wires. There were less normal things like books and cups of coffee and crossword puzzles.

Sandy lay still, surrounded by her machines and wires.

"It's a coma," the young nurse whispered to Karen. Karen knew about comas from soap operas and after school specials. Comas meant death.

"Talk to her. She can hear you,"

So Karen stumbled forward, stood next to her mother's bed.

Sandy looked different than the pretty young girl who had left Oklahoma with a bun in the oven. She was anorexic thin, her face drawn and lined, and she seemed much older than 31. Her blond hair was almost a full third gray, and dull. Her lips were dry and cracked.

"Mom, mom…" Tears blurred her vision and Karen swiped at them with the backs of her hands, squeezed her eyes shut.

"Mom, it's me, it's Karen,"

Sandy's eyes flickered, first to the left and then the right beneath the closed lids. Karen knew she could hear her.

"Mom, I love you. I don't want you to go,"

Karen sat with her, talked to her softly, until she died.

x…………x…………..x

There was numbness. Unreality. Karen moved slowly and felt like she was underwater, perhaps in a dream, a nightmare.

The Florida heat waited for her, enveloped her in its moist humidity. The fragrances of the flowers, of fried seafood, of pot, of suntan oil, all swarmed around her.

She had no one. No family. No reason to stay. No ties. She had one name and she clung to it like a talisman, like the last ditch option at the end of her luck.

How hard would it be to find Sodapop Curtis?

x………x…………x

One more tie in Florida, one more reason to stay. Karen dressed carefully in a lightweight full length black dress, pulled her hair back into a neat ponytail.

She walked into the church, a fragile 15 year old dressed in black. The white casket gleamed at the front of the church. The small fans high in the ceiling only stirred the air, didn't touch the heat.

x……x………..x

She had some money saved. When that ran out she'd hitch hike, pan handle, maybe get picked up by some psychopath and be killed. She didn't care. She was alone.

The day after her mother's funeral Karen was on a gray hound bus, a small bag on the seat beside her. She leaned her head against the glass.

She projected her mind, her thoughts, toward this Sodapop Curtis. Her father. Why hadn't he stayed with her mother? There was so little she knew about her own history. Maybe her mom had never even told him about her. Maybe she'd left Oklahoma and never looked back.

Karen tapped her fingers on the glass, watched the flat Florida scenery slip away. Palm trees and pastel houses, people wilting in the overpowering heat.


	3. Chapter 3

She arrived in Oklahoma at night. She thanked the driver, a college drifter who was thinking of going back to college in the East, or hopping the pond to England and Europe beyond. He had black hair and green eyes and was cute in a dangerous outlaw type of way, and Karen thought briefly of kissing him, of him pinning her down in the back seat of his little car, and maybe a knife gleamed in the hand she couldn't see. She shook her head, ashamed to be seeing the serial killer in every stranger that helped her.

"Thank you," she said, and now the stranger's green eyes narrowed in concern.

"You sure you got a place to go? It's pretty late," he said, and flipped his hair out of his eyes with a quick toss of his head.

"Yeah, it's okay. I'm going to my dad's,"

He nodded and smiled, satisfied she'd be safe. As he drove away and the darkness settled more firmly around her, Karen thought of the curious lie she'd told him. 'My dad'. If he lived here still, if he was even alive. She knew about Vietnam, knew plenty of kids whose dads went there and never came back. Maybe hers had, too.

But it couldn't be helped. Her mom was gone. This Sodapop Curtis was the only one she had to go to. So she squared her shoulders, readjusted her bag over her arm, and walked on.

She didn't know where to start. She didn't know up from down in this town, she had to find North. Isn't that what her mother said? He had lived on the North side.

A weary sigh escaped her, and her bag felt 10 pounds heavier, 20, the weight of the world. She leaned against a brick building, some boarded up old factory by the looks, windows soaped over, blinded eyes. The bricks felt cool against her back, and she closed her eyes.

"Hey,"

Karen jumped at the voice, gasped. A boy stood in front of her, his longish dark hair curling at his collar. She squinted at him, tried to figure his age. 16? 18? 22? There was no way to know, no way to tell. But he did not appear to be a threat, and was keeping a respectful distance.

"Hey," she said, and ran a slightly shaky hand through her hair. He was digging through his jacket pockets and finally came up with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He held out the pack to her and she shook her head no. He shrugged and took one out for himself.

The air was cool, much cooler than Florida and Karen shivered. The boy took a drag on his cigarette and eyed her bag.

"Runnin' away?" he said, his words slow and twisted with the Oklahoma drawl. Karen nearly had to blink back tears. He had the same accent her mother had had.

"Huh?" she said, setting the bag down, and the weight of it off her spine felt almost painfully good. The boy pointed his cigarette at the bag and looked at her.

"That bag. You runnin' away or what?" She liked his voice, soft and kind of scratchy. Cute.

"Oh, the bag. Yeah. No, no, I didn't run away,"

"Oh no? Then what are you doing all the way from Florida or California with that stuffed bag?"

She blinked. Was she so transparent?

"How'd you know I'm from Florida?"

He shrugged, half modest, and flicked the cigarette butt high into the air. Karen watched it arc down.

"Suntan and freckles, and I can tell by how you talk that you ain't from around here. Plus you shivered, and shoot, girl, it ain't even cold,"


	4. Chapter 4

He was right, in a way, but the heat was relative, like everything else. Karen was beginning to see that it was all relative. Her body was used to the cloying and visible heat of southern Florida. This place, scattered litter and broken bits of glass and the high weeds and the chain link fences and the boys with their long hair and hoodlum jackets, this was a cold place.

She hadn't even thought to bring a jacket. She wanted to hit her forehead with her hand, she was so stupid. She watched the boy lean against the brick wall and pull another cigarette from his pack. It was filterless. Bits of the stringy tobacco stuck to his lips. Her mother had smoked, too. Long elegant Virginia Slims. She hugged herself, unable to get the chill out.

"Here," the boy said, shrugging out of his jacket.

"No, it's okay," Karen said.

"Take it, Jesus, you're freezing. I got other jackets,"

She smiled at him and the jacket felt warm from when he was wearing it. It smelled like cologne, cigarettes, sweat.

"Thanks,"

She just stood there, thinking she should ask him to guide her to the North Side, but she felt unable to start the process by opening her mouth. She felt suddenly exhausted, too tired to blink. So she leaned against the wall and felt the warmth of the borrowed jacket and felt that she could fall asleep standing up right there.

"What's your name?" he said, bringing her back from the sleepiness, and she sucked in her breath to blow it out again and form her answer.

"Karen. What's your name?"

"Shawn,"

She nodded, and felt the sleepy feeling overwhelm her again. She had nowhere to sleep, nowhere to go. She couldn't just sleep here, risking murder and rape. Being here was enough for now. She wasn't in the mood to search out Sodapop Curtis just yet. What if he wasn't here? As long as she didn't go looking everything could still work out. Hope was better than nothing at this point.

"Nice meeting you, Shawn. Thanks for the jacket," she said, hoisting her bag up again, her muscles aching again.

"Taking off?"

"Yeah,"

She left, even though she sort of wanted to stay with him. She glanced back, saw the thin T-shirt she had left him with, some faded rock group on the front, tour dates on the back. Headed toward a diner, wanting a greasy burger and a big coke. She didn't want to talk to anybody, look for anybody. This maybe wasn't such a good idea. Karen wrinkled her brow, looking around the unfamiliar dark city that her mother had come from. The place where she learned to swear, where she learned not to trust anybody, where she learned that loyalty meant shit and the side of the city you lived in made all the difference. Karen narrowed her eyes, felt acutely the fact that her supply of money was dwindling. And maybe there was no Sodapop Curtis.

"I'm fucked," she whispered. Might as well find some department of social services office and go into foster care, some aloof foster family that would treat her like a paycheck instead of a person.

She found a diner instead, the countertops gleaming in places, the shine dulled under grease and food in other places. Stools lined up under the counter, mismatched, some with cracked leather upholstery, some with cloth slip covers. A jukebox was at the far end, the records inside spinning lazily, and some late 70's Journey tune played, Perry's voice holding the notes until you could almost cry.

Karen came in, and felt the heat inside the diner, felt it warming her legs under her skirt, and she set her bag down on the dusty floor, dragged it to a stool and sat.

"What'll it be?" A waitress came over to her from behind the counter, her long hair piled on top of her head with elastics and black bobby pins. She was skinny and had large sunken eyes, a few silvery grays trapped with the rest of her dark hair under the bobby pins. A thick pad of paper was in one pocket, a stubby, bite marked pencil was behind her ear.

"Hamburger. Coke,"

The order didn't even bear writing down, and the waitress turned from her and spoke to the cook. Karen let her head fall, closed her eyes, felt the beginnings of the headache that meant she was stressed, and tired, and scared, and alone.

She could hear the conversations of the other patrons, the deep voices of the thick muscled factory workers, their faces and hands grimy, talking about bosses and younger female co-workers and raises and getting screwed over. Teenagers, mixed group, laughing and joking, leaning into each other, making plans to go see movies and go to parties and complaining about homework and tests and this teacher and that. She heard it all, heard the mother tell her grade-schooler to stop teasing the younger sibling, heard the married man tell his wife he was at work, the pay phone held in his sweaty hand and his eyes glued to the secretary at his booth. They had their lives, good for them. Karen felt, in their conversations, the lack of her own.

Her food arrived, the burger bigger than the bun, shoestring fries in a pick-up-sticks pile beside the burger, the coke in a tinted yellow plastic cup, ice melting already, watering it down. It looked like more food than she could ever eat.

She chewed slowly, afraid she might puke if she went too fast, and when the waitress seemed to have a free moment Karen called her over.

"I'm new here, and I'm looking for the North side. Could you help me?" Her eyes felt wet and blinky. She shouldn't have tried this, she shouldn't have come here.

"What's on the North side?" the waitress said, one eyebrow cocked, one palm flat on the counter.

"My dad, I think,"

The waitress nodded, and explained to her how to find the North side. Karen jotted the directions down on her napkin, and it was such a cheap napkin it was as good as paper anyway.

The greasy food in a hot ball in the center of her stomach, her headache worse, she fought off waves of nausea, hugged her arms in Shawn's jacket, and headed to the North side. Time to stop putting it off.

It was amazing to her how many doubts could crowd her little brain. He was gone, moved years ago and no one would know where he was. He was dead. He was in a rice field in Vietnam rotting away under the sun. He was in any of the 49 other states, he was lost, he was in any small town or big city and what was she supposed to do? Call them all?

The night grinded on, and she could see the faint stars overhead, felt her shoulder protesting as she settled the bag onto it again, and she kept walking. Head up, shoulders squared as much as she could with the bag twisting her this way and that. Past the shabby houses and apartment buildings, rotting fire escapes hanging down near the sidewalks. She walked, past rusting cars and twisted bikes and cheap plastic toys littering yards and people drinking on their porches, and people sitting in front of the zombie blue glow of their T.V. screens.


	5. Chapter 5

She saw the phone booth, the dents in the box, and she thought of superman. Took a deep breath, and she felt herself shrink inside of Shawn's jacket. Stars twinkled in the sky beyond the phone booth, the roofs of the houses, the tree line.

Inside the booth, Karen set her bag down, leaned her head against the glass and picked up the receiver. It seemed so simple all of a sudden. Call information and ask for an address for Sodapop Curtis. She listened to her call being connected, listened to the bored, professional voice of the operator. They had an address for him, an apartment on the North side. Karen jotted it down on the back of one of her notebooks, thanked the operator, and hung up the phone. She still held onto the receiver, hung on it like a person holding onto the only thing available over a deep chasm.

She could go tonight, right now. She could just burst into his life without warning and, and then what? She shook her head. Thought of her mother before she got sick, how beautiful she was, how she was always there for her. Even when she was deathly ill she still put her needs first. The tears started and wouldn't seem to stop. Karen left the phone booth, dragging her bag with her, sat down on the curb, hugged herself and cried.

Hugging her knees, rocking back and forth, the tears tapering off. Karen wiped the last of the tears with her sleeve, swallowed hard. She was alone. It had just been her mom and her and now…this Sodapop Curtis was all she had.

She looked at the address she had written down, looked at how her handwriting was all jagged and desperate. Started walking down streets, looking for the name of his street or for someone who she could ask, someone to point the way.

She saw a woman who looked like a maid trudging along. Karen noticed the light blue dress, the nylons, the black shoes, the weary expression.

"Excuse me," she said to her, and the woman stopped, looked up. Karen asked her question and the woman thought for a moment.

"Yeah. I know where that is," she finally said, and explained how to get there. Karen listened hard, harder than she had ever listened to anything in her life.

"Thank you," she said, and headed off that way while the maid went the other way.

She saw the street sign, the name of the street in white on the green rectangle, and she stared up at it. Okay, this was it. Okay. Walked down the street and stood before the apartment building. It was huge and brick with metal fire escapes clinging to the side. She saw the yellow light coming from most of the windows. Headed up the steps and pushed on the glass door. It had once had one of those security locks but it had busted long ago and the door easily swung open. Karen was accosted by that big apartment building smell. Piss in stairwells. Lysol on the floors and walls.

She didn't trust the elevator and took the stairs up to his third floor apartment. Looked down the long hall and at the doors that all looked the same except for the cheap gold numbers attached to them. Doubts crowded in. Maybe he wasn't home. Maybe he'd send her away.

It didn't matter. It didn't matter now. Her mother was dead. She'd come this far. She'd have to see. She'd have to try. That was it. It didn't matter that it was hard and scary and that she really wanted to run, to not see and to not try. She licked her lips, stared at the number of the apartment tacked to the door with rusting nails. She could hear noises from inside. Heard the babble of a T.V. Heard kids' voices. Heard water running. Heard everything. She lifted her fist and knocked.

A woman answered the door. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, early thirties. Slender, an apron around her t-shirt and jeans. She wiped her wet hands on the apron and looked at her questioningly. Karen blinked and sucked in her breath.

"Uh, hi. I'm looking for Sodapop Curtis. Is he here?"

The woman looked puzzled and almost angry, and the raised voice of a little kid from inside the apartment caused her to whip her head back toward the sound. Then she turned back to Karen and squinted at her. Karen felt the weight of her stare, the weight of her puzzlement.

"Soda? Uh, yeah. He's here. Soda!" she called for him and Karen felt like she couldn't breathe. Behind her Karen heard footsteps and then she saw a man, almost unbelievably handsome like a movie star or something and Karen just stared.

"Hi," he said, just a hint of puzzlement in his voice and none of the anger of his girlfriend or wife.

"Um, hi. I'm Karen, and I'm from Florida. My mom was Sandy,"

"Sandy? Sandy's your mom?" he said, and a sort of sadness had crept into his voice.

"Yeah. She was,"


End file.
